Quote (fender @ 1 Feb 2020 11:33)
the rational part of your post, wanting the EU to be limited to certain aspects, is obviously a totally legitimate position to hold (for the sake of a real conversation, i'll just ignore the apparently inevitable outlandish conspiranoia). it's beside the point though: the core obligations were clear to each and every member when they joined, changes were democratically voted on and transparently communicated, and each member is free to leave the union at any point.
wishing the EU to be something different is fair, maybe even reasonable, if you exclusively look at it from the narrow perspective of national economic interest, completely disregarding its history and explicitly declared political goal of bringing peace and stability to europe, strengthening it as a whole - but you don't achieve that by just leaving and trying to get the benefits without the obligations. your best shot at achieving that is actively participating, leading, and thus shaping the union in a direction that you prefer, finding allies that support your goals. the UK never really tried any of that, generally speaking they always acted with arrogance and an undeserved sense of superiority, trying to maximise their benefits while largely abstaining from major common projects, like the monetary union or trying to find fair and workable solutions regarding the refugee problem.
Uh... no?!
When the UK joined the EEC/A in 1973, it was still a predominantly trade-focused project. It only turned into a clearly political project, with a not-so-clearly communicated but still obvious endgoal of forming "United States of Europe", when the EU was founded with the Maastricht treaty in 1992. Let's read what the wiki entry about this treaty has to say:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht_TreatyQuote
Only three countries held referendums (France, Denmark and Ireland – all required by their respective constitutions).[3] The process of ratifying the treaty was fraught with difficulties in three states. In Denmark, the first Danish Maastricht Treaty referendum was held on 2 June 1992 and ratification of the treaty was rejected by a margin of 50.7% to 49.3%.[4] Subsequently, alterations were made to the treaty through the addition of the Edinburgh Agreement which lists four Danish exceptions, and this treaty was ratified the following year on 18 May 1993 after a second referendum was held in Denmark,[...]
In September 1992, a referendum in France only narrowly supported the ratification of the treaty, with 50.8% in favour. This narrow vote for ratification in France, known at the time as the 'petite oui', led Jacques Delors to comment that "Europe began as an elitist project in which it was believed that all that was required was to convince the decision-makers. That phase of benign despotism is over."[7] Uncertainty over the Danish and French referendums was one of the causes of the turmoil on the currency markets in September 1992, which led to the UK pound's expulsion from the Exchange Rate Mechanism.[citation needed]
In the United Kingdom, an opt-out from the treaty's social provisions was opposed in Parliament by the opposition Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs and the treaty itself by the Maastricht Rebels within the governing Conservative Party. The number of rebels exceeded the Conservative majority in the House of Commons, and thus the government of John Major came close to losing the confidence of the House.[8] In accordance with British constitutional convention, specifically that of parliamentary sovereignty, ratification in the UK was not subject to approval by referendum. Despite this, the British constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor suggests that there was "a clear constitutional rationale for requiring a referendum" based on the allocation of legislative power.